'I didn't speak to him for a week': Arteta reveals how he welcomed Saliba back to Arsenal

“The first two sessions we looked at him, we went ‘there’s huge potential here’,” said Mikel Arteta about William Saliba.

“The way he settled, the way he started to get his role around his team-mates and the way he played in pre-season. He took out every question mark that we could have with him and gave us all the reasons to play him. He’s been exceptional since that day.

“For the first week I didn’t speak to him. I just wanted to see – naturally, without me really interfering in his thoughts – how he was. Because then you can understand the real him and after that I spoke to him.”

Opening up about the doubts he had over Saliba at the start of last summer, Arteta added: “The first question was how the player was going to reintegrate into our dynamic after being out for so long.

"Is there some frustration there, something personal between, for example, me and the player because he could not understand? There were a lot of question marks and he went with all of them, ticking them off and giving us every reason to be confident that he was a great player for us.

“I was 100 percent sure that I was going to have a lot of pressure externally to give him the opportunity – that was for sure. Obviously I was really willing to find out what we found out in pre-season. Then it was the perfect storm and a beautiful relationship started to build there. And he’s done what he’s done this season.”

Saliba spent the past two seasons out on loan in France prior to the start of the current campaign and there were major doubts as to whether he would ever succeed in north London.

He has gone on to start every single league game for Arsenal this season forming a formidable partnership at the heart of the defence with Gabriel Magalhaes.